That, in broad terms, is the gist of We Don’t Wanna Make You Dance, a sort of telescoped pop variation on the Up Series (and the latest addition to the MusicFilmWeb.tv catalog of music documentaries on demand). Michael Apted’s long-running doc project famously checks in every seven years on a group of Brits he began filming as children; Lucy Kostelanetz started a little later, first shooting New York band Miller Miller Miller & Sloan in 1983 and returning camera in hand five and 24 years later to see where music, and life, had taken them.

Products of the prestigious High School of Music & Arts in Harlem, brothers Dan, Barney, and Mike Miller and their friend Blake Sloan were fixtures on the New York scene in the early ’80s, peddling an energetic brand of rubbery white funk that got them regular gigs at CBGB, Trax, and the Peppermint Lounge and one of the coveted opening slots during the Clash’s storied residency at Bond International Casino in Times Square. (More on that in a post next week.) They were fresh-faced kids with chops to match, ready for the industry to come calling even as they dissected their own rock star ambitions with self-mocking humor.

By ’88 the band was purveying a synth-y hybrid of Dan’s microchip tinkering, Barney’s hip hop leanings, and Mike’s soul-boy croon, still chasing the elusive record deal but feeling the strain of onrushing adulthood. By ’93 MMM&S was finished, and Kostelanetz had moved on to what would become another long-term project, Sonia, a documentary about the 20th-century Russian avant-garde painter and revolutionary (and Kostelanetz’s great-aunt) Sofia Dymshitz-Tolstaya. Upon Sonia’s release in 2007, and with encouragement from her editor (and now producer), Jared Dubrino, she revisited the band footage and returned to the members, curious to see what mark their youthful dreams and creative pursuits had made on now middle-aged lives split between coasts and careers in tech, video, and design.

Following a festival run with We Don’t Wanna Make You Dance, Kostelanetz is now in pre-production on another music doc, about another notable artistic relation: her late uncle, renowned conductor Andre Kostelanetz. We spoke with her and Dubrino last week about coming full circle with Miller Miller Miller & Sloan; the Q&A was edited for length and clarity. You can stream or download We Don’t Wanna … here or on the player at the end of the article.

Sam Lay runs through Chicago blues history like a sinuous beat underlying a Muddy Waters lick. Make that a double-shuffle beat – the signature sound Lay developed as a drummer for Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Paul Butterfield, and other Chicago luminaries. When Dylan went electric at Newport in ’65, Sam Lay was behind the kit, and his prodigious rhythms on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album set an aspiring kid drummer named Jim Osterberg on the path to becoming Iggy Pop, as Iggy delightfully recalls in the music documentary Sam Lay in Bluesland.

Still going strong at 80, Lay gets a deserved star turn in John Anderson’s film, which premiered, fittingly, at the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival in April, just after Lay was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Shot through with performances by Lay with his own quartet and the Siegel-Schwall Blues Band, the doc captures his singular sartorial style (he’s partial to capes, crowns, and jeweled canes) and storied musical history with a mix of rollicking recollections and a trove of vintage, intimate footage Lay shot of fellow blues greats at work and play in Chicago clubs.

The movie cements Anderson’s place as a cinematic historian of Chicago blues, coming on the heels of Born in Chicago, his 2013 documentary on the white kids like Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Corky Siegel, Nick Gravenites, and Barry Goldberg who immersed themselves in the city’s black music scene and carried the blues torch to the Woodstock generation. A music doc veteran known for his work with Brian Wilson, Anderson is in the late stages of a PledgeMusic campaign to raise money for Born in Chicago’s music and video licensing, prefatory to a cinema and digital release. Perks include copies of the forthcoming Born in Chicago soundtrack signed by Sam Lay and other contributing artists; the campaign runs until September 16.

On the 25th, Anderson and Lay will be in the house for a screening of Sam Lay in Bluesland at the University of Illinois-Springfield, making the timing even more propitious to post an interview with the filmmaker by Chicago-based writer, musician, and friend of MFW Steve Karras, whose other claim to fame is having attended the same synagogue as Mike Bloomfield. Continue reading →

Spuds and beautiful mutants from far and wide will converge on Cleveland August 14 and 15 for DEVOtional 2015, a gathering of the Devo faithful that started in the ’00s and was resurrected last year after a four-year hiatus. To mark the momentous event we present an interview with Keirda Bahruth, director of the recently released concert film Hardcore Devo Live! (which you can watch immediately after reading at our VOD site, MusicFilmWeb.tv, or on the player at the end of the article).

Bahruth captured the band in top form at Oakland’s Fox Theater, a stop on last year’s Hardcore Devo tour devoted to rarely performed nuggets from before the band’s major label breakout in the late ’70s. Intercut with the concert are interviews with original members Gerald Casale, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Bob Mothersbaugh recalling Devo’s formative years working out their philosophy and look in the basements and garages of Akron. (Casale, a star attraction at the upcoming DEVOtional, talked about those early days and the Hardcore tour in a February MFW interview.)

Hardcore Devo Live! marked Bahruth’s return to music documentary three years after Bob and the Monster, a heartfelt and visually innovative profile of Thelonious Monster frontman Bob Forrest, his descent into abject addiction, and his re-emergence as a nationally recognized expert on recovery that we discussed with the director in a 2o11 podcast. The Q&A below was edited for length and clarity; click here for audio of the full interview, originally conducted by Chicago-based musician, filmmaker, and friend of MFW Steve Karras for the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival.

That '80s show: John Garabedian (top row, second from left) and the VJ crew that briefly rocked Boston.

WVJV-TV aired on channel 66 in eastern Massachusetts from February 1985 to September 1986. A short-lived UHF station that flickered off the air 29 years ago might seem pretty forgettable. But WVJV was better known as V66, “The Beat of Boston,” and at a time when MTV was just a few years old and still unavailable to much of America, it devoted itself to the nascent medium of music video, 24 hours a day. Conceived by one legendary Boston DJ, John Garabedian, and co-owned by another, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg, V66 audaciously attempted to re-create radio on the TV, broadcasting live with requests, giveaways, and a deep commitment to the fertile hometown music scene.

The station swiftly gained a fervent local following, and the cream of ’80s video royalty stopped by its suburban studio to shoot promos and chat with VJs. But in a TV world where the mathematics of measuring viewership rested on 30-minute program blocks, not 3-minute videos, that didn’t translate into ratings, or ad dollars. When the summer of ’86 ended, channel 66 became on outpost of the Home Shopping Network (it’s now part of the Spanish-language UniMas network). In Life on the V: The Story of V66, Boston-born filmmaker Eric Green traces that singular moment in broadcasting history in a rush of reminiscences (from members of the Cars, the J. Geils Band, New Edition, Morphine, the Del Fuegos, Extreme, and ‘Til Tuesday, among others) and crowdsourced VHS footage.

To Green, who was glued to V66 as a kid, the station’s legacy lives on in today’s interactive media, and in the venerable Garabedian, who took his cut of the V66 sale and started Open House Party, an all-request syndicated radio show that still airs every Saturday night in 150 US markets. With the documentary newly available for stream and download from MusicFilmWeb.tv, we chatted with the filmmaker about reliving life on the V. Continue reading →

In a year when the headline music documentaries have excavated the lives of troubled, tragic figures, Mavis! is a refreshing blast of unadulterated joy. Not that Mavis Staples‘ life has been without strife, and Jessica Edwards’ stirring profile touches on the segregation the gospel/R&B icon experienced and the personal sacrifices she made in a life devoted to music and performance. But it’s that devotion, and the gift it offers both artist and audience – the gift of “positive VI-brations,” as Mavis memorably growls from the stage in an early concert scene – that lie at the heart and soul of the film.

Emphasis on the “soul,” of course: if Roebuck “Pops” Staples was the engine that powered the Staple Singers for 40-plus years, it was his daughter Mavis’ miraculous voice that drove the family group to the first rank of gospel and then the top of the charts. And if the Staples’ embrace of civil rights and soulful grooves alienated some of their traditional church fans, it made them one of the most important and influential groups of the ’60s and ’70s, with timeless hits like “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There,” a message of social justice and self-empowerment, and a repertoire that ran from folk-rock to slinky R&B. No wonder Bob Dylan, Prince, and Jeff Tweedy all have a thing for Mavis (the latter two have produced her records, and Dylan reportedly almost proposed back in the day).

A few weeks past her 76th birthday, she remains a force of nature and a touring whirlwind, as Mavis! makes delightfully, exclamation-pointedly clear. Since premiering in March at South by Southwest the doc has been a fixture on the fest circuit, landing next at the Melbourne International Film Festival August 2 and 9, and it will be broadcast on HBO early next year. I spoke to director Edwards and her producer/husband Gary Hustwit (director of the “Design Trilogy” documentaries Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized) in June when Mavis! screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest. Continue reading →